mercy in the spaces of your Canines
by MemoirsoftheMoon
Summary: Swapped, of sorts. Rosalie leaves Rochester for Forks, abandons gilded status for gossip studded anonymity. There is a girl with golden eyes determined to uplift her from suffering but what she doesn't understand is that Rosalie chose Hell and it's sulfuric consequences. **trigger warning, descriptions of rape and mental illness and trauma**
1. countered by the words of you

What the fuck am I doing here. Here goes Nothing.

**_WARNING *** TRIGGERS***_**

_This story will have mentions of rape and depictions of mental __illness_

_It will have a graphic description of Rosalie's rape at some point_

**DO NOT CONTINUE IF THIS WILL CAUSE MENTAL ANGUISH. PLEASE. **

* * *

She was cultivated with the best of intentions, a respected family name, a polished artisan face, and the breeding of a better century. If you asked her mother, she wouldn't know what had gone awry. In the pale, slitted eyes of Marilyn Hale, she had grown Rosalie in the best soil with the most nutritious of fertilizer, fed her only a steady diet of watered compliments and feminine pursuits.

Rosalie decides that she likes the way scandal has become her now, the sticky rumors, the clenched accusations clinging to her Achilles' tendons, dark mutterings dogging her every step.

It's 4AM and school starts in three hours, lethargy and exhaustion sink their claws into the walls and lean over her shoulder with gaping maws. She could allow herself to be swallowed by the drowsiness and down the velvet mouth of sleep but the revisitations from her past won't be worth it. Instead, she crouches on the chair, half ensconced in shadow, palms twisted up in supplication as she tries to discern the future in life lines of her upturned palms. Never has she puts much stock in the revelation of wrinkles in pale paper skin but her once friend Vera had always been insistent you could find the future in the most unlikely of places.

Vera is a fool and a dreamer and Rosalie feels the missing fill her empty vacuole chest and spill over with each breath.

It's midnight in Forks, Washington and the rain is a quiet drummer on her windowpane. This, at least is a familiar presence, Rochester often fell with the same sentimental drops. The once domestic companion is tinted of mockery now, accusations Rosalie cannot run from even over a thousand leagues away. She snorts, letting her hands fall into her lap and twist in the soft fabric of her pooled t shirt, old whispers laving up the walls and down upon her head.

The sullied journeys on her palms speak of nothing except for past transgressions and bones rent by force, thrice healed. There is no need for her hands to remind her of what has been wrought when the shadows do so well enough.

She stands and the shadows shift over her face, whispers growing strained in the night, rising. She stalks toward the bed, never minding the half light refracting off her back and the halo of her hair.

The mirror is shattered anyway and holes in it are empty sockets of judgement.

-_skeleton girls and the exhales of the unwanted-_

In Rochester Rosalie faced the mornings with a pop song on her phone, greeted each day with whirr of her blow-dryer, the cherry scent of her lip gloss, and glitter eyeshadow to highlight her baby doll eyes. She would pick out clothes with a practiced hand, petal polished nails and soft fairy ring fingers whisking over labels of expensive couture. Here, in Forks, she sits up at the continued cry of the alarm, eyes darkened with exhaustion. Her nightmares are of beasts she left behind, not of conjurements from the recesses of her mind.

She wears the first things hands grope through on the floor, a sullied hoodie and worn leggings ripped up the side. Her nails are chipped and bitten down, her hands spotted with grease worked into the lines. Carelessly, she yanks her hair into a ponytail and traipses down stairs. She leaves her textbooks behind.

Charlie is waiting for her downstairs, a tentative smile aimed in her direction. Chief Charlie Swan is the divorced husband of her Aunt Renee and one of the only supporters she has in her branded fall from grace. Rosalie is more grateful to him than her empty hurt is capable of conveying at any point in time but she does her best in chewed out words and scrubbed floors.

"How are you this morning, Rosie? Sleep well?"

She bristles at the pity, her teeth clacking on the edge of an angry retort. The soft shelled words stroke her bruised and frayed edges more than she cares to admit but she bears them anyway because she can still see Uncle Charlie entering the bland wooden courtroom all dressed in blue and calmly striding over to her nearly deserted seats on the right.

"Fine," she mumbles, inching past him and going to the grumbling fridge. She jerks open the door and pulls out a carton or orange juice, unscrewing the top with a vicious yank. It pops open with a violent slush that spills all the way down the front of her sweatshirt. "Dammit!"

Uncle Charlie flinches at her yell but the pity hanging in his eyes is damning and she can't even stand to look in his direction anymore.

Throwing the orange juice in the sink, heedless of the sticky puddle she will need to scrub at later, Rosalie races for the door, snatching the keys to her car on the way out. Her throat tightens into porcelain pores and she manages a strangled "Sorry" as the front door slams behind her.

The Chevy is ancient and functioning only because she rebuilt the carburetor. those first three empty weeks she fled here. It's door opens as soon as she yanks, a few rust particles spiraling lazily onto her sweater sleeve. She clambers into the front seat, grateful for the solitude. In the warm steamy front seat, her eyes are misting so heavily she can barely stick the keys into the ignition.

Charlie is a faded figure as she revs out of the driveway and her frustrations are ground away by the open road to Forks High School.

-_scholastic institutions and ink colored spittle on your chin-_

Rosalie walks alone.

Her visage is coveted she has been told so many times but her fangs and teeth are venomous enough to keep even the more arduous admirers at bay. Nowadays she bears the whispers of those who hate her with the same grim grit as she always did in Rochester.

It is so easy.

She sits in her classes as because she is told she has to, she does her schoolwork because it's a routine, and she breathes because her lungs are sheathed by involuntary muscle and her brain has not yet been blown away. In US History however she daydreams about it. About pink matter spraying across the cement in the garage, about the car battery blowing red lines in the perfect caricature of a girl, that coveted figure so rented and twisted into viscous slabs of meat no one will ever think of touching her again.

It's a pleasant pastime and Rosalie doodles car batteries and straight, straight lines on the edges of her notebook as the lunch bell rings.

-_darling, i would eat if i were not so bloated by repentance-_

The cafeteria is crowded and Rosalie contents herself with an isolated table.

No one speaks to her. Not since Crowley put his hand on her shoulder and she spun around and slammed her fist into his jaw.

His crumpled, bubbling fear, made her so deliriously ecstatic, even as her mouth foamed and she screamed, "Don't you EVER TOUCH ME!"

Charlie fast talked to get her out of that one and the masses have left her be since.

Her punching Tyler only fuels the rumors and singes her hair with the fire whirl of gossip. She's fucking her uncle, she had a baby in Catholic school and came here to raise it, she's a whore with an angelic countenance and a violent streak, she caught her boyfriend cheating on her in New York and set his dick on fire…

They are all. So. Wrong.

So Rosalie sits alone at the Formica table, picking apart a granola bar in an orange juice stained sweatshirt. She lines the granules up on the Styrofoam tray, taking great care that the kernels are equivalent in size. Whispers about her odd behavior waver around her shoulders but how can she care when she has half a bar of ground nuts left? It's certainly more than the empty jar of marbles she has to contend with in her brain.

_ Screeee_.

The painful sound of metal against linoleum cuts through the languid practical fog Rosalie is ensconced in and she blinks, once twice, three times, to clear her ears of the mutterings of ivy gossip. Frowning, she slowly raises her gaze from the soldier lines of granola and levels it across the table to behold a being more celestial than flesh.

Isabella Cullen.

A too slow blink of confusion and Rosalie feels her eyes again shutter open and close to realign the reality of the situation. The mirage of the girl is still in front of her, solidifying at the edges as she stares. Perturbed, Rosalie shifts her gaze to the far corner of the room to behold the lances of disapproval from the rest of the Cullen family. To Rosalie's knowledge, they have always flocked as one, this strange cobbled together family with their cut beauty and quiet demeanors. The only family to cause more of a stir than Rosalie herself ever did in this dewdrop of a town.

What is Isabella Cullen doing, sitting across from her like this?

"H-Hello," Isabella's voice is lyrical and bell tones despite the carefully sounded out salutation. Her dark mahogany hair curls into dense tree roots, twisted and mysterious, half hiding ambrosia honey eyes slightly squinted as she gazes at Rosalie. They are stunning eyes, Renaissance eyes the Old Masters labored over to be captivating and breath stealing. A lesser person would be melting, mouth agape for approval like a mindless fish. Unfortunately for Isabella Cullen, Rosalie is quite used to stunning presences. She remembers what it was like to be the one that stirs the fire and harness the gazes. She cannot be touched by mere ephemeral beauty alone.

Rosalie feels her upper lip curl and her teeth shine in anticipation of barbs. If this had been a year ago Rosalie would have felt her self-esteem plummet and plastic shallow anger at being outshined in appearances. However this is now and all Rosalie can feel is pulsing annoyance at being interrupted from the careful alignment of granola granules.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" the question spills from her mouth, not quite as ferociously as she hoped, still touched as she is by bemusement. She glances back at the Cullen Table. Not one of them has lifted their gaze from the strange little unit Isabella has formed by sitting across from her, though the boy with the bronze hair is outright glaring now. Rosalie sneers back and the boy's eyes narrow in answer. Were his irises darkening or were the florescent light finally fizzling out what was left of her sanity?

A seeming hitch in breath and Isabella allows her own gaze to drop to the table. Rosalie is suddenly acutely aware of the stickiness clinging to the tips of her fingers, the muddled citrus spill across her stomach. Her fists close and she crosses her arms resolutely at her chest.

"I…" Isabella struggles for words it seems, "I…wanted to come over and you know…say hello." Her anxiety halos her like lamb wool, a sweet sort of innocence that would have been so endearing for anyone with a protective streak inside of them. It's the look that makes old women hand out butterscotch candy and men blow dust off biceps to move mountains.

"Fuck. Off." The words are spit, venom pods that splatter across the table. At the ferocious tone, Isabella seems to draw more into herself, a shadowy furrow forming between her arched brows, the honey beginning to swim in her pupils. One pale hand twitches up and meanders slowly to clutch at the knit material of her dark blue sweater.

It crashes down on Rosalie as she watches Isabella be anxious. Watching those statuesque eyes become over bright under the harsh florescence of the cafeteria, that slow, unsure hand tuck itself in the valley between the other girl's sweater encased breasts. Isabella Cullen is one of _those_ girls.

The sweetling maidens of virgin white with no blood or dark alley screams in their pasts. They are antique lace burnished and coveted, pastry flake supplications to beguile the masses and charm their future partners. Girls with no steel inside of them because others will rush to their aide at the first rise of a rose petal sigh. The annoyance simmering low in her ribs begins to churn in earnest.

"Didn't you hear me, Princess?" she hisses, the sarcastic title scorching the tip of her tongue in a perverse pleasure. Not too long ago, this would have been the insult snarled under clenched teeth by her harshest critics. Silly, vapid Rosalie with her throwaway smiles and shiny hair. Princess of the simple masses adorned by Instagram hearts alone. "Fuck _off_."

Isabella flinches at the violence promised in those words and glances trepidatiosly back toward her family, the movement fluid as the crest of a wave. She has a jawline to set offerings out on. Rosalie is fully aware that eyes are upon them now, the whole cafeteria dropping decibels to take in their drama. Her nails are digging so deeply into the palm of her hand electric sparklers are warning down her arm.

"Hey!" Rosalie raises her voice to get Isabella's attention, making the brunette face her again, "Are you fucking deaf, I said – "

"No."

The oxygen sucked through her nostrils is tinted with rage and the scent of funeral flowers, "What the – "

"No." the sculpted ends of Isabella's mouth twitches and the soft mercy of her beauty is directed to Rosalie. She splays her Mary hands open on the greasy Formica tabletop. Blasphemy that such holy aesthetic should meet the sullied surface spit upon by cafeteria drones.

"I won't let you drown." The beneficent gold of her eyes is rose water and absolution as she stares directly into Rosalie's void blue.

Unbidden, Rochester wells up. The stones and gravel in her scapula. The misting of the rain. The streetlights, bleak and severe as they cut a path on her exposed flesh. Her oxygen supply ceases and the empty space in her chest breaks open and spills tar through her slats of ribs. The gawking of the other students falls away as Rosalie remembers and locks focus with Isabella Cullen.

"…you…" Rosalie finally manages though a mouth that remembers how to scream and be ignored.

Isabella leans forward, still overbright and touched by phosphorescent high school lighting.

"Go fuck yourself."

Rosalie stands, letting her pelvis knock against the lunch table and jostle her granola formations. Leaving the unruly mess behind, she turns and runs, gold still reaching for her shoulders.

* * *

I can offer myself no defense other than I am the barely knotted together trash of erotica and the despairing well of writer's block. Fanfictions are good knuckle cracks for writer's, I'll have you know. At least, this is my pathetic excuse for this floozy of an fiction.

Anyway...I wanted a story in which Rosalie is human and doesn't die from her assault. I wonder what kind of person this would have made her?


	2. your stone my flame

Title: mercy between the spaces in your canines

Ch 2: your stone my flame

_**WARNING *** TRIGGERS*****_

_This story will have mentions of rape and depictions of mental illness_

_It will have a graphic description of Rosalie's rape at some point_

**DO NOT CONTINUE IF THIS WILL CAUSE MENTAL ANGUISH.**

* * *

_-vacuoles of sentiment within my veins-_

When Charlie comes home the first thing he does is dismantle his gun and stash the bullets in his pocket. "Rosalie?" he calls out tentatively, the consonants in her name pressing against the agar thick cloud of abandonment the house is holding. The doorframes of the rooms seem to gape, empty throats that are hardly ever traversed.

He gets no answer, of course, Rosalie is more apt to use her silence and her hooded looks as conversation, the things unsaid more relevant than the few words she does manage to discharge after mastication of thoughts. After braving a peek through the ajar door of the guest room, he eventually discovers Rosalie on the dusty concrete floor of the garage, her exposed knees being kissed by dust bunnies and her fingers smashed into the gutted innards of an engine.

"Hello, Rosie," he greets, cringing himself at the facsimiles of false cheer garlanding his words. Rosalie seems not to hear him as she deftly tilts the contraption in her grip, not minding the oil smears sneaking down jointed wrists.

"Can I ask what you're doing?" he follows the unanswered salutation after a moment, bewildered. He rakes over the yawning maw of the truck, its metal heart torn from it and spread out over the floor as Rosalie bends over the disemboweled pieces.

Silence roils in the cavernous garage, a sly companion with daggers behind its seemingly harmless pulses. One day Charlie is certain he will wake with his jaw agape and his nails digging for his own jugular for the uselessness the silence tells him he is. Rosalie still does not look at him as she begins to pick at a wire.

He's about to give into the quiet and allow himself a beer to contemplate his worthless attempts and sate his agonized mind when the softest whisper ribbons through the strangulating hush, gathering dust as it eeks nearly shyly across the concrete floor.

"I'm trying to make it quiet."

He stands at the open door, staring down at the doubled over girl in her frayed jeans and dirty cheerleading sweater from more pristine days. What does he say to her? He is no father, no stronghold man with church scripture values. He is aging, balding, and lives the existence of a bachelor and a solid life. Though as an officer of the law he knows the nightmares run amock in the curved ivory of Rosalie's skull, they hardly happen in the town of drizzled Forks.

"Can…can I help?' it's a tentative extension at best, weak and feeble at worse. But Charlie has no cookies to offer and he knows Rosalie's psyche needs to be spared with more than sugar baked crumbles.

The silence wanders back, blades hidden no longer as it squats boldly in the center of the room, gathering strength from the folded scapula bones of Rosalie as she draws further into herself at his besotted offering. There is no sound but the stillness blares of his uselessness, that he should have just been his usual lump of a man, gone to the living room, turned on a senseless war game, and drowned himself in unnecessary carbs and fermented barley.

But then then are lavender blue fields peeking out from beneath the wheat strands of mussed blonde bangs. Plaintive and howling for salvation from a vista of lunatic agony.

"You can hand me the screwdriver."

Charlie undoes his police belt and heaves himself over to sit by her.

_-sweetheart i lay my hands upon my heart and ask you to fulfill me-_

"What were you thinking, Bella?"

Edward is using that voice that used to remind Bella of crushed luxurious velvet in leather gloves. The leather gloves are still there but they constrict her throat instead of her heart these days. "I don't know what you mean, Edward."

In the limited space of the backseat, her husband squares his shoulders back, inhaling unnecessary oxygen sharply through the thin slats of an aristocratic nose. It's an impressive stance, his anger beginning to engulf the occupants of the car and causing the tendons in Jasper's neck to snap to attention beneath his skin.

"Bella," he hisses, the probe of his mind pressing grubby fingers against the glassy surface of her erected shield, "Open up. Tell me what your thought process was." His tenor drops two octaves to a smooth baritone of a tragedy in ebony. "Please, love."

Jasper and Alice stare determinedly out the window of the vehicle.

At the cooed term of endearment Bella cannot help but to let those sticky spears of inquirement past her barriers and dip into her sanctioned mindscape. She pulls up the afternoon in stark clarity and relives it as one with her chosen partner of eternity watching from the eaves.

…

Jasper approaches, a cutting figure from across the empty hall, his usual discomforted expression twisted into the planes of agony. Immediately Bella reaches out with her wonderful blankness and does her best to cover him with it, wrapping it around Jasper's core.

"Thank you, Bella," her brother in law breathes and they share a quiet moment, him leaning over her and leaning down to press his forehead against her waving hair. She allows her own eyes to close, grateful for the intimacy amongst the humans she cannot interact with.

"What's wrong, Jazz?" She murmurs, reaching out and brushing his bicep with her fingertips. A heavy sigh sizzles out from between his teeth.

"You remember that girl, Rosalie Hale?"

"No," Bella answers honestly, "I don't recall." it's true. She floats along in the human world like an ostracized insect, unwelcome and wings unsure as she dips and wanes. It takes much concentration to keep her beloved husband shielded so that he may have his peace as he delves into his tasks.

"Bella," Jasper admonishes cheerfully in his low Southern crawl of a voice, old amber whiskey and mesquite smoke, "She caused such a riot of the children when she first was enrolled by Chief Swan three months ago. Then, she punched Tyler Crowley in the face." he allows himself a sloping grin at the memory.

"Oh," Bella intones, still without any comprehension. Where has she been in these events? She is so lucky Edward looks after her now even with having joined the eternally endless ones. _You would lose your head if it weren't for me_, his husking chuckle might as well be breathed into the shell of her ear as she relives his often repeated phrase.

Jasper's face sobers and falls into his usual lines of pinched agony. If he were human, those lines would have long ago scoured into the lines of someone weary of the world. "The…the pain coming off of her." A deep shake rattles through the xylophone of Jasper's chest.

Bella frowns, her stroking fingers pausing on Jasper's bicep, "Is it…is it that bad?"

Her brother looks up and if Bella needed breath she might have gasped. "I have only felt despair like that in those who knew they were about to die."

…

Edward pulls out of the memory but the set to his clenched teeth tell Bella he isn't satisfied. "Where's the rest of it?" he asks, quite nearly instructing, "Show me what happened during the lunch period.

She obliges.

…

This time, Bella clocks into her surroundings as she pays for a soda and globules of tomato paste pasta. She regards the Coke a little sadly as she sits down at her designated table.

Jasper and Alice are the only ones there so far, Edward must be held up in Civics. Her slight best friend quirks an eyebrow and goes, "Did Edward infect you with the bug of brooding?"

"No," Bella scowls at her, despite the smile threatening her lips, "I was just thinking about Coke?"

"Eurgh," Alice gasps but Bella ignores her gripes and picks up the can. She turns the cylinder over and over in her hands as the vibrant crimson of the label refracts promised joy in her eyes. The marketing of the company is sleeker now, but still reminiscent of her own dim human days. Back in the 70s, this was her favorite drink to swig while she perused her books. She can almost remember the pleasant pop of carbonation against her cheeks and the sugary cold sliding down her throat. A pity the taste makes her gag in earnest now.

Jasper nudges her out of her nostalgic lamentation, "That's Rosalie."

The Coke rim rings shrilly as Bella's fingertips pop against the aluminum, nearly puncturing it.

Rosalie Hale is beautiful in an ethereal, fleeting way. Bella can count the rhythm of her heart strings from where she sits across the room, can watch the blood vessels pulse with each beat. She's symmetrical in that coveted Golden Ratio even formed of soft flesh as she is, though the curvature of her body is hidden in an oversized sweater and leggings.

Blonde nimbus hair, unruly and clearly unwashed swings as a veil to undulating steps, half concealing that enchanting visage. When Bella narrows her focus however, she can spot the scar across Rosalie's temple, faded and shadowed by flyaway strands. If her insides still ran with hot blood, she would have been frozen. How could such beauty be so damaged?

The human girl is given as wide a berth as any of the Cullens and this puzzles Bella, after all, who would not be on their knees to have a piece of such loveliness? Then she recalls Jasper's story of Rosalie's fist making acquaintance with the face of Tyler Crowley and realizes this girl must be an explosive force.

"Here comes your hubby," is Alice's bladed whisper and Bella blinks out of her reverie just as the blonde sinks into a corner table and her love slips into the chair beside her.

"Hello Edward," she greets with a smile. His scripture lips twist in kind and he leans forward to peck her on the cheek.

Returning her attention to the blonde pariah in the cafeteria, she barely hears the lilting complaint about Edward's day start up. Instead she is focused on the way brittle nails are piercing through the brown granola bar and digging out individual granules to set out on the Formica table. Rosalie arranges them five to a row, then two, then seven. There is no rhyme or reason to the formations and Bella counts less than ten blinks per minute and twice as many breaths.

"I'm sorry," her voice floats out across whatever litany Edward is saying, abruptly cutting off his tirade, "I'll be right back."

She's rising out of her chair before she realizes it, sea foam carried by the westward wind. There's muttered protests behind her and the air ripples as someone to her right snatches at her hand and misses. Dull chattering rises, quiets, and drops off completely as she weaves between the metal chairs. Her focus is all on those fine boned fingers and the sticky brown crumbs squatted on dirty nails as she reaches for the empty chair across from Rosalie and sits.

Two breaths and the teenage girl looks up from her sacrificial offerings.

Isabella exhales and then inhales on the sharp bite of Rosalie's heartbeats, quickening with pale gold adrenaline.

"H-Hello," she offers, the best way she knows how as an intoxicating scent akin to bergamot and patchouli linger in her throat and flare at her thirst.

So close, she can see the scar in sharp relief and realize cosmetic skin is sitting over it, likely grafted from another part of the girl's body. She can see from Carlisle's short career in plastic surgery in invisible to the human eye tucks around the human's nose and smell the solid silicone padded on zygomatic crests and tucked around her orbital bones.

She's so busy examining these augmentations she almost misses the drawback of lips to expose porcelain veneers set on teeth.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" the question splats out and Bella can't help the way her body pulls back and the catch in her breath as warm exhalations are wafted in her direction. It's an oozing moist comfort, almost as though placing her cheek against fragrant warm pound cake. The contrast is the girl's voice, low and caustic, seeking to wound.

It is lucky Bella is adamantine skin and four decades or so of discipline.

Or so she thought as crystalline eyes are searing into her skin. Rosalie's glare is white hot and makes oxygen molecules collide in Bella's throat in an unprecedented way. She cannot help but to lower her own eyes in answer.

_The…the pain coming off of her._

"I…" Beall hesitates. Whoever knew of a vampire hesitating, mind white static and eyes flatly set against a grimy tabletop? She squares her shoulders in resolution.

"I…wanted to come over and you know…say hello."

_I have only felt despair like that in those who knew they were going to die._

"Fuck. Off." Rosalie spits the insult, revulsion crawling into her voice. Unwanting confrontation, Bella can only draw away and clutch at herself.

It should not be like this, how can a mere human voice reduce her to cowering? Rosalie is not anywhere in the leagues of her strength or endurance, she is yielding clay and a precarious ecosystem of organs. One careless flick of her fingers and Bella could crush her skull as easily as a sodapop can.

"Didn't you hear me, Princess?" a taunt, the click of Rosalie's wet hot tongue clicking on the proffered title. "Fuck _off_."

There's a brush on her mind and she looks back toward her family, taking in their expressions. Jasper looks concerned, Alice trepidatious, and Edward seems a step away from snarling like a beast as Rosalie even as his consciousness reaches to dig into Bella's.

It's the sneer that incites movement back into Bella's limbs, the crumpling of flushed flesh as Rosalie glares back at Edward. _No one_ dares to pull faces at Edward.

"Hey!" Bella blinks back into the typhoon of Rosalie's eyes, "are you fucking deaf, I said – "

"No."

The word falls out of her, as easily as a rhyme from childhood. She smiles up at Rosalie, at the break in the girl's composure, anger clearing to give way to disbelief.

"I won't let you drown." She doesn't mean to say it but the roiling wave that collapses through Rosalie's tightened spine is worth it.

The pain Jasper gaped against shines through in that moment and Rosalie's tight hostile veneer cracks to reveal an pure spirit pinned against impossible circumstances. It's breathtaking and Bella can't help but lean forward, her own mouth parting for more of that heady enchanting smell that sets her thirst aflame.

"You," Rosalie pushes out.

Bella gravitates toward the golden sun.

"Go fuck yourself."

…

She pushes Edward out before the icky soak of shame can saturate the memory and will not look at his furious face.

"What were you hoping for, Bella," he gripes and she can only cringe. Dully, she wishes she could once again find enchantment and beauty in the way Edward gestures with his long fingers, or the way his jaw tightens when he is upset. A quarter of a century has lifted the rose glasses however, and cracked them cruelly under cobbled heels.

She is quite glad that he cannot read her mind, even as she continues to share her intimate space with him, so that he may not be bombarded by the scattered whisps of others.

"I mean," Edward starts, as painfully as though explaining an algorithm to a toddler, "how could you be so careless to fraternize with that human girl."

That human girl. Like she wasn't of the same variance the Cullens were all once a part of. Like just a few decades ago Bella wasn't a part of that collective, soft flesh, beating heart, wild tattoo of wet blood.

"We speak to humans all the time," Bella replies, hoping to avoid an argument. Wisely, Jasper and Alice are silent, pretending to mind their own business as the trees flash past. Jasper is driving too fast as usual but Bella knows he won't hit a thing.

"Not like that and you know it!" Edward explodes, "You traipsed over there and dropped in front of her without an regard for the rest of our coven. Do you know how much attention your foolish little stunt caused?"

Something hot is coiling in the pit of Bella's stomach, startling her out of her dazed stare into the rain. These years she just feels cold. Never any heat. She's just tundra and glass toned smiles.

"You have not placed the priority of this family forward and it shows in your careless actions, Bella!"

"Edward!" yelps Alice even as a plaster crack sounds out from under Jasper's fingers. The coil in Bella's stomach dies down. They always fight her battles for her because Bella doesn't speak up. She lets Edward berate her and yell. She's not sure why. But her body doesn't respond in the way it once did, all those lifetimes ago. It used to be, someone would yell, and her answers would come out in her tear ducts. Nowadays she's feeling like all her bodily expression is being robbed.

She's stone, in the very sense of the word. Alice and Edward are continuing to escalate their argument but Bella doesn't comment at all. She exits the car silently when they arrive, letting the snarls alert Esme and for her to run out to quell the conflict.

Isabella Marie Cullen glides up the stare with wraith like grace, almost as though her toes do not even tap against the polished wood. She bypasses the bedroom she and Edward convene in and haven't consummated to drift into Carlisle's library. Here, safe among the sentries of authors long since ceased, she lets the cold emptiness envelop her.

Isabella feels nothing and that is exactly why she wants that brittle rage Rosalie Lillian Hale holds between her fluted bones.

"Bella?"

The soft sing of her name draws her out of the self thrown well and she smiles up at Alice with weary lines on her face. "Hello, rabbit."

The lithe fae drops onto her side, practically in her lap. "Word of advice?"

Bella braces herself for it.

"Drive the M3 tomorrow, take the back roads."

A slow blink and Bella feels the sides of her mouth twist up.

"Trust me." And Alice places the gentlest petal kiss on her raised cheekbone.

* * *

: i know Jasper isn't really affected by Bella's shield but I would say that unless he's actively reaching to feed off emotion they kind of come at him like a mental cloud so if Bella perfected her shield she should be able to keep all unwanted emotional taxation away from him? Don't know, don't feel like rereading breaking dawn. Once was enough, k?:

So...A Rant in Isabella Marie Swan Cullen

While I absolutely adore when people have their own interpretations of characters (is that not the reason we are all here?) personally I never saw Bella as someone who could stand up for herself. Every moment of inner strength she exhibits, ie going to face certain death with James, keeping her baby, was for the sake of someone else. She braved death for her mother, she made a pact with Rosalie for Renesmee.

In this slightly turvy version, Bella does not have any of that to hold herself up. Her parents have long since passed away and she was never impregnated while human. Her life was ripped away and even in _Breaking Dawn_ (which I am ignoring) we see her struggling to find her persona within this new, fierce body she's been rebirthed into. None of what made Bella so memorable is there anymore, no more blushes, no off kiltered stance, she will never cry from anger again. She is quite literally…newborn as they call the freshly made vampires. Without something to hold onto that isn't Edward, I feel like she would lose herself into something he wants.

One of the greatest sins of Twilight in my opinion is it offered shallow depth, as in the characters all had potential but Stephanie Meyer failed to take them to their peak. Bella never learned to be strong to herself, she only learned to give herself over to Edward to make him happy. Why Edward becomes such a control freak? I'll include my soapbox about Edward Cullen, Romanticism Heroics gone sour in my next chapter.


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